Thursday, April 16, 2015

Cheating on my Library

I’ve been going to a new library to work. I love, love, love my local branch. But I’m driving five miles past it about once a week now and setting up my laptop at another branch entirely.

For one thing, it has a pig. The Covington pig, to be precise. In the greater Cincinnati area, painted pigs dot the landscape. Cincinnati was once the pork hub of the Midwest (much as Kansas City was the place for beef to be), and it’s nickname–Porkopolis–lives on. Runners from around the world come here for the Flying Pig Marathon runs. We love our pigs.

But beyond the pig, the library has…total strangers. I know my local branch like the back of my hand. The librarians greet me by name–heck, they don’t even scan my card anymore. They just tip-tip-type and pull up my account.

But my NEW branch is full of people who don’t know me, don’t know what I am doing in that corner, and never ask the most dreadful of all questions, “How is the new book going?”

I know that someday that will all change. They’ll start greeting me by name and I’ll ask questions about their grandkids.